There is no one in the basketball world today who does not know Middle Tennessee.

Ranked No. 24 the last two weeks by the Associated Press — the first time the team has ever been named to that poll — the honor seemed too much even for coach Kermit Davis to ask for outright.

“I don’t ever say stuff like that,” Davis said after a victory at Louisiana Tech, explaining the remarkable nature of the feelings he was verbalizing, before reaffirming that, yes, he believed that Middle Tennessee was among the 25 best college basketball teams in the country.

Six years earlier, making such an assertion seemed unlikely to anyone but those closest to the team. Davis entered his 10th season as Blue Raiders head man with a solid if not particularly spectacular record, though he had already become the winningest coach in program history.

MTSUÕs head coach Kermit Davis, left was honored with a commemorative basketball before the game against UAB after winning 400 games as a Division I baseball coach, on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018, at MTSU. The ball was present by MTSU president Sidney McPhee.
HELEN COMER/DNJ

MTSUÕs head coach Kermit Davis, left, was honored with a commemorative basketball before the game against UAB after winning 400 games as a Division I baseball coach, on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018, at MTSU. The ball was present by MTSU president Sidney McPhee, center and MTSU Director of Athletics Chris Massaro, right.
HELEN COMER/DNJ

MTSUÕs head coach Kermit Davis, left was honored with a commemorative basketball before the game against UAB after winning 400 games as a Division I baseball coach, on Saturday, Feb. 24, 2018, at MTSU. The ball was present by MTSU president Sidney McPhee.
HELEN COMER/DNJ

The first sign was an 86-66 manhandling of UCLA, a team with dynastic college basketball roots. The Blue Raiders also blew past Ole Miss, 68-56, a sweet victory for the Mississippi native Davis.

The nucleus Davis was forming had a signature. Forward LaRon Dendy and guards Bruce Massey, Marcos Knight and Raymond Cintron had all been mined from junior-college basketball. Then there were others like Kerry Hammonds, then a sophomore shooting guard with a lightning shot from the corner whose father had once patrolled the Middle Tennessee hardwood, and JT Sulton, an athletic forward from the Mississippi high-school ranks.

With that team, which finished 27-7, Davis proved what everyone knows today: no one knows the hidden corners and overlooked talents of Southern basketball more than he.

Dendy was the real find. The big man only played the one season as a Raider after playing two junior-college seasons and one at Iowa State. Dendy also had once committed to Clemson, so many coaches would be excused for passing him up, but Davis didn’t and in doing so, found a Sun Belt player of the year.

I began covering the team in January of that season after being named sports editor at Sidelines, the campus newspaper. I was present when Vanderbilt’s Festus Ezeli went head to head against Dendy at Memorial Gym and largely seemed to get the best of that battle, prompting Davis to joke, “I wish we’d have (played) when (Ezeli) was hurt.”

I watched the team wash out in the first round of the Sun Belt tournament. But then the magic appeared.

The NIT is not called the “nobody’s interested tournament” for nothing, but it’s pretty big for those who are in it. The Raiders took out Marshall in the first round, then went to Knoxville and won a thriller at Tennessee.

It was the first appearance in a major post season tournament for Middle Tennessee since 1989 — I wrote that so many times the fact is branded in my brain. One more win would have sent the team to New York’s Madison Square Garden.

What a time it was to be young, learning the journalism craft and following what felt like history.

The win didn’t happen, of course. Minnesota tripped up the Raiders 78-72. But it felt like it was the start of something, and it certainly was.

Key players on that team — Massey, Hammonds, Cintron, Knight, Sulton — were around the next year to guide the team to the big one, the NCAA tournament. Their leadership is directly connected to what came later.

I was long gone by then. I stood in front of a newsroom television with my mouth hanging open as MT brought down mighty Michigan State.

But every year about this time, I think about how special it felt and how lucky I was to be there when it really, truly began.

Reach Alex Hubbard at dhubbard@tennessean.com or follow him on Twitter @alexhubbard7.